Thought control is at the heart of every business and every public institution.  It’s a also a major constituent of marketing – understanding the psychology of marketing and selling is critical to power and success.

Thought control is central to the following institutions:

• politics and government
• religion
• education
• our legal system
• the media
• business
• family life – the parent/child relationship

The majority of people are happy to be led by the nose because they are usually lazy in thought and deed.

Everyone has an opinion but most opinion is not based on fact-based research or careful investigation.  It is based on prejudice and the daily dose of mis-information and marketing that they are fed by the various institutions that touch their life with their controlling messages.

In King Henry VIII’s time the clergy had a strangle-hold on the interpretation of the Bible which was always written in Latin.

When Latimer translated the Bible into English he was forced to emigrate to Europe as a heretic because the clergy were determined to retain their stranglehold on the thoughts and aspirations of their flock through their monopoly of the Bible and it’s translation, which promised it’s followers access to heaven (or hell for disbelievers and heretics) based on a set of values which included giving money and land to the church to buy your way to a better after-life!

The same level of thought control is in operation today if you care to look for it.

This is particularly the case in marketing.

The internet both facilitates and disarms thought control.

It facilitates thought control by making it possible to share your message – the ISIS rebels in Syria and Iraq are using social media very effectively to recruit support for their dream of an Islamic state.

The internet also disarms thought control because it gives you the capacity to research what is actually happening in more depth and to listen to other peoples opinion.

In the case of ISIS, we can also hear about what an Islamic state means in practice – repression, barbarity and regression to a medieval set of values loosely based on religious fanaticism.

In China, the internet is policed by the state – a form of thought control.

This is why it pays to understand marketing practices and the psychology of marketing – to know when someone is deploying a marketing strategy such as scarcity or risk-reversal – gives you the ability to stand back from the situation and make a more careful assessment of the facts.

Understanding that thought control is at the heart of every public and private institution gives you the ability to start thinking more critically – to unbundle the controlling elite.

To me, religion is all about thought control – it has resulted in the accumulation of enormous power and wealth for the religious institutions and their clergy.

But very few people think like this – they are content to concede personal freedom and power to the clergy.

It’s the same with marketing – businesses can accumulate enormous power and wealth through marketing.

The power of thought control through clever marketing is at the heart of every good business – persuading you to pay more for perceived benefits is what marketing is all about.

Whilst Apple have good products, they are only able to charge more for their products because of smart marketing – a form of thought control.  Their equipment is essentially a fashion statement that panders to the ego of the owner who justifies the enormous price he pays by recalling the marketing messages that led to the sale.

Whilst on occasions a mobile phone can be useful, I used to manage very well without one and still do!  I don’t have a mobile phone at the moment and I don’t feel the need for one.

Recently my car broke down and I didn’t have access to a mobile phone to call the garage.

What did I do?

I borrowed one from a passer by and offered to pay them for the call.  They refused payment because they were happy to help me.

It’s easy to justify your phone purchase as insurance for emergencies but for 99.999% of the time it just doesn’t hold water.

Others will say that they need their phone to access their email (another form of thought control!) or bank account – both of these reasons just aren’t true – I control both without a mobile phone just by organising my time effectively and limiting my access to both services to certain times of the day.

In any event you can get a perfectly serviceable mobile phone for about £5 if you really think you can’t live without one.  But people are still paying hundreds of pounds for mobile phones – why?

Thought control achieved through marketing and peer pressure.

In fact, this very blog post is a form of thought control.

In business the real power lies in thought control i.e. marketing – get good at this and you can accumulate power and wealth just like all the other institutions listed above.  Understanding this transfers personal power and freedom to you and away from these institutions because you now understand the game that they are playing.